Ho! Ho! Ho! Christmas is around the corner and here I wishes all readers a very Merry Christmas! Christmas is a very special moment for many people, same goes to the Japan music industry because many artists will release single to celebrate this wonderful day. And here I will continue the tradition by sharing Christmas JPOP songs with you all!

Well, there are a total of 13 Christmas songs in the playlist I created. And I also include Christmas songs from 宏実 (Hiromi) again that I featured last year, this is because I think Hiromi’s songs are really nice and worth a listen again! And many of the songs are love related, perhaps during Christmas season, many will want to celebrate with the their most loved. Songs like “Christmas Love” by Nishino Kana is really sweet and lovely, while “my Secret Santa” by moumoon is cute and perhaps YU-A‘s song best reflect my situation. Read on to access to the playlist!

Continue reading »

It’s Flickr showtime again! Since the first series, now I think it’s time to create the second series of the inspirational Flickr member galleries. As tradition, 5 lovely galleries will be showcased. Head on to check it out!

H@ru

Link to CarolynsHope photo slideshow.

Continue reading »

As a Web Designer, Adobe Photoshop is a superb tool for designing websites and many other designs as well, and it becomes one of the designer’s must know arsenal. In the current Web scene, there are many resources that being provided free of charge or labeled as open source. Well same goes to Photoshop and graphic resources. I found 10 websites that dedicated to provide quality free Photoshop (PSD) as well as graphic resources, and would like to share to the readers in this post.

These websites provides a wide range of resources, from UI elements to templates, and even textures and vectors. Everyone can download the files for free and use it wisely. I think it’s a great resources for learning Photoshop as well. Actually who doesn’t like free stuff? Read on to find out the 10 websites!

Continue reading »

Japan is a wonderful country with richness and uniqueness in terms of culture, nature and life. Because of these, Japan has been a great spot for photography enthusiasts to fire up their camera shuttle. There are a lot of photographers in Japan share their views of Japan through photography and upload them to photo blogs.

I found a lot of photo blogs that dedicated to Japan. From these blogs, we are able to view and feel what’s happening in Japan and also discover great tourism spots which would like to go in the next trip to Japan. Without saying more, read on to find out these cool Japan photo blogs!

Continue reading »

Visiting galleries definitely are one of the ways to look for design inspirations. There are tonnes of galleries out there showcasing the best in designs, and some of them are focusing on specific genre or field of area, for example app designs, minimalist designs, typography and more. This is quite handy because I can focus on specific genre in straight forward manner.

Without further elaborating, below are some galleries with specific genre. Continue reading to proceed!

Continue reading »

Playground is always the best place to have fun and explore new things. Kids loves to play with sand, bricks and toys. But this doesn’t mean that human stop playing when grown up. We are still playing but with different sets of tools and play zone. Web Designers and Developers too, love to play and experiment. Here in this post, I present you 8 designers and developers’ front end playground.

Besides doing full time job or client’s assignments, these adventurous designers and developers are not forgetting the desire of trying something new with latest web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript. Some demonstrations are really cool and able to learn from them on what’s the possibilities in web design scene. Please check out their playgrounds after the break!

Continue reading »

As a Web Designer, one thing that I really need to thank is the news resources and articles that provided by various Web Designer blogs from all of the world. From there, I am able to expose myself to the latest trends and practices to make a better websites. News and articles like essential CSS skills, awesome jQuery plugins or cutting edge Photoshop techniques, we can’t just get enough of that! But there’s an issue. How to keep up with all the news and articles?

One of the obvious practice is to subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed and load them into your reader like Google Reader and Netvibes, but sometimes it can get too much and it’s hard to filter out. Well here I will share with you all on how to find latest Web Design news and articles from various design blogs in a place. The links are normally generated by popularity or bookmarked by community. Well lets find out!

Continue reading »

In the modern Web Design, the implementation of a grid system is getting popular and become a common practice, thanks to the 960.gs and design pioneers like Khoi Vinh. With grid system, designers are able to lay out the structures in a more refined way. However, these grid guidelines are normally invisible on the design output. But I found that there are some websites that has visible grid lines as part of the design.

Well I think this definitely is a small trend in the current Web Design. By putting grid lines on the design, it somehow shows the professionalism of the designers on how he or she structures and align the design, while it also looks cool and geeky as well. Some grid lines are clear and some are subtle. Here I present you 17 websites that has visible grid lines. Please check it out.

Continue reading »

Flickr is one of the most popular social image hosting websites on the Internet. On Flickr, there are a lot of talented photographers uploading their photos there and I really like many of them. I found a lot of really nice galleries and would like to dedicate this post to showcase 5 lovely photo galleries.

*Sakura*

Link to *Sakura* slideshow.
I really love photos that capture flowers, and *Sakura* is expert in that.

Continue reading »

UNIQLO is a casual wear designer, manufacturer and retailer originate from Japan and they are really popular and even have branches in many major cities in the world. I really like UNIQLO because of its unique identity and characteristics. When I was in Japan last year, I grab my opportunity and shopped in one of the branches in Tokyo.

But what I like is not just the lovely clothes. I also admire UNIQLO in different aspects, from branding to campaign. Here I listed down the 5 things I like about UNIQLO.

Continue reading »